The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Weeping Ship, sentence 65
I would rather be a mountain pine tree, or an oak in the valley with squirrels leaping among my branches.”
Who acts: I, squirrels · What happens: be, leap · To what, where: pine tree, branches
This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Weeping Ship. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, squirrels), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.
Mova's own parse. This tree may be wrong.
The tree
The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)
| # | word | lemma | UPOS | features | head | relation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | I | I | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs | 8 tree | nsubj |
| 2 | would | would | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 8 tree | aux |
| 3 | rather | rather | ADV | _ | 8 tree | advmod |
| 4 | be | be | AUX | VerbForm=Inf | 8 tree | cop |
| 5 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 8 tree | det |
| 6 | mountain | mountain | NOUN | Number=Sing | 7 pine | compound |
| 7 | pine | pine | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 tree | compound |
| 8 | tree | tree | NOUN | Number=Sing | root | root |
| 9 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 12 oak | punct |
| 10 | or | or | CCONJ | _ | 12 oak | cc |
| 11 | an | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 12 oak | det |
| 12 | oak | oak | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 tree | conj |
| 13 | in | in | ADP | _ | 15 valley | case |
| 14 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 15 valley | det |
| 15 | valley | valley | NOUN | Number=Sing | 12 oak | nmod |
| 16 | with | with | ADP | _ | 17 squirrels | case |
| 17 | squirrels | squirrel | NOUN | Number=Plur | 12 oak | nmod |
| 18 | leaping | leap | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 17 squirrels | acl |
| 19 | among | among | ADP | _ | 21 branches | case |
| 20 | my | my | PRON | Case=Gen Number=Sing Person=1 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 21 branches | nmod:poss |
| 21 | branches | branch | NOUN | Number=Plur | 18 leaping | obl |
| 22 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 8 tree | punct |
| 23 | ” | " | PUNCT | _ | 8 tree | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is a | would | I | a pine tree or a oak in the valley with squirrels | a oak in the valley with squirrels conj | tree rules | |||
| 2 | leap | gerund | squirrels not said here | my branches | vn run-51.3.2-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme among branch=Trajectory |
One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.
Text: «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, Project Gutenberg book 66819 (public domain in the USA). Tree: Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. Frames: Mova's frames reader (prag), the chapter read in order.
This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66819/33/65/